A transition from an author’s book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.–Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, no. 14 (Saturday, May 5, 1750)

Galloway from those ellipses, sir.

So the whole Scott Galloway email thing has been making the rounds on the internet. I read about it this morning on ye olde booke of faces and commented briefly on what I thought were its obvious shortcomings: 1. lack of professionalism, and 2. bad writing.

It’s not that I don’t understand Galloway’s sentiments. The student walks into class an hour late on the first day–in the second year of graduate school, no less–gets dressed down for inexcusably bad behavior, and gets embarrassed. Once back home, the student mistakenly believes that some special set of circumstances makes their defense of the indefensible unassailable, and tries to score a point or two against the professor. The whole disingenuous “I just want to be open” part at the end really underscores that we’re dealing with a modicum of politeness as a veneer over straight-up vengeance ethics.

I get it. Everyone who’s had the pleasure of teaching students has had to deal with disrespect. And just like in Beowulf, when someone takes a swing at you, even if only by besmirching your honor, your first impulse is to swing back as hard as you can. The warrior ethic may prevail on Wall Street (I say may because here lately Wall Street seems to go a-begging more often than it goes a-pirating). But unfortunately for teachers who sympathize with Galloway, universities don’t operate by an eye-for-an-eye ethic, recent shootings notwithstanding.

Universities aren’t all about fair play or the life of the mind–see Cornford’s Microcosmographia for a keen description of how things tend to work–but they have always held themselves to high standards of professional courtesy. Like doctors and lawyers, professors do best to keep their communications straightforward–one might even say business-like.

So where does Galloway’s response go wrong? I think the first few paragraphs are pretty clever, actually:

Just so I’ve got this straight…you started in one class, left 15-20 minutes into it (stood up, walked out mid-lecture), went to another class (walked in 20 minutes late), left that class (again, presumably, in the middle of the lecture), and then came to my class. At that point (walking in an hour late) I asked you to come to the next class which “bothered” you.

Correct?

You state that, having not taken my class, it would be impossible to know our policy of not allowing people to walk in an hour late. Most risk analysis offers that in the face of substantial uncertainty, you opt for the more conservative path or hedge your bet (e.g., do not show up an hour late until you know the professor has an explicit policy for tolerating disrespectful behavior, check with the TA before class, etc.). I hope the lottery winner that is your recently crowned Monday evening Professor is teaching Judgement and Decision Making or Critical Thinking.

Mostly Galloway turns a whiny email into an education: “Use the principles we’ve taught you, because the real world wants you to act a certain way even if it isn’t spelled out for you.” The subtext is clear and useful: making bad decisions doesn’t help you get ahead in life.

The last sentence, on the other hand, is flat-out insulting. I’ve never worked in an office where that kind of email would have been tolerated, but perhaps B-schools make nothing of mocking those who aren’t already acculturated into the kind of common sense they take for granted.

It’s when Galloway decides to keep going with the insult that his writing gets, if not technically awful, at least carried away and betrayed into needless mistakes and quirky stylistic tics. By the end you just feel bad for the guy:

xxxx, let me be more serious for a moment. I do not know you, will not know you and have no real affinity or animosity for you [what? oh, wait, this is just a set-up for the “you’re nothing to me–NOTHING–and I rule” high-school-dude bullshit in the next sentence]. You are an anonymous student who is now regretting the send button on his laptop. It’s with this context I hope you register pause …REAL pause xxxx and take to heart what I am about to tell you [punctuation other than the ellipsis might be helpful here, but “register pause…REAL pause”? who talks like that?]:

xxxx, get your shit together.

Getting a good job, working long hours, keeping your skills relevant, navigating the politics of an organization, finding a live/work balance…[another ellipsis] these are all really hard, xxxx. In contrast, respecting institutions, having manners, demonstrating a level of humility…[another ellipsis] these are all (relatively) easy [its also easy to respect those beneath you, set an example of the kind of manners you expect, and to be humble yourself, but these are points Galloway isn’t interested in considering]. Get the easy stuff right xxxx. In and of themselves they will not make you successful. However, not possessing them will hold you back and you will not achieve your potential which, by virtue of you being admitted to Stern, you must have in spades. It’s not too late xxxx…[was this written by a professional or a teenage Twilight fan on the internet? how many sets of these things do three paragraphs need?]

Again, thanks for the feedback [concludes sarcastically, not to be outdone by the disingenuousness of the last line in the original email].

This unprofessional display puts Galloway’s professorial status in serious doubt. But his faculty webpage gives us more reasons to doubt his professiorial skills. It curiously lists no publications and little education beyond an MBA. [Update: apparently he’s an adjunct. In which case, what does he do in his classes, in lieu of actual academic stuff: sit around telling stories about how much money he’s made?]

It’s not that I disagree with your analysis of Galloway’s writing. I just found the whole thing entertaining. And, after all, it was informal writing. The’s guy’s an adjunct business professor, not an academic. I’m a full-time professor of applied music, not a genuine scholar. While I can write an OK blog post, I don’t do academic papers. My colleagues who can and do write academic papers? You really don’t want to hear them play.

It would be a terrible thing if more people wrote like academics, actually!

It really isn’t the writing, so much, as what the writing says about the character of the person writing it. One of the things about teaching is that you have to act like an adult even when you’re dealing with a student who’s acting like a child. There’s also the bizarre tics and just plain unhinged-ness of the closing paragraphs. Taking out his frustration with university policy on a student. Insulting them. And so on. Geez–is this guy 19 or 40?

The key paragraph for understanding what I’m driving at with this post–and I’m going to include it here, since you obviously didn’t read it–is this one:

“Universities aren’t all about fair play or the life of the mind–see Cornford’s Microcosmographia for a keen description of how things tend to work–but they have always held themselves to high standards of professional courtesy. Like doctors and lawyers, professors do best to keep their communications straightforward–one might even say business-like.”